OAKLAND — Two teammates recently joined Raiders legend George Atkinson in pledging their brains to Boston’s Concussion Legacy Foundation to help further research on the effects of head trauma and playing football.
The impetus to speak out came in the wake of the death of their famous quarterback Ken Stabler, whose family revealed this year that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in a growing number of athletes.
The disease, known as CTE, can only accurately be confirmed in the brains of the deceased, although physicians hope to soon develop an effective way to identify it in the living.
Lineman George Buehler, defensive tackle Art Thoms and safety Atkinson are among the latest athletes to publicly discuss their experiences to keep the concussion conversation in the national spotlight.
“In the past, a lot of these folks suffered in silence,” said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. “To see that changing, I’m hoping, is a positive in that it lets people seek professional help. Damaging someone’s brain, especially when it is voluntary, is a tragedy.”
This news organization recently talked to the former Raiders about their situations. Here is an edited version of the conversations with Buehler and Thoms, both 68, and who are brothers-in-law.
On the way they played the game:
Buehler: The first two weeks of training camp I would have one of those splitting headaches, kind of like brain freeze. But you’d have to practice anyway. Twice a day you have to put your helmet on and start bashing heads. The first five or six collisions are painful and then it subsides until next practice, then you go through the whole thing again. After a week and half you don’t experience the headaches anymore. So you assume you’ve toughened up to the point where you are impervious to the hitting.
When I was playing, the first thing you and your defensive lineman hit were helmets. You fired down as hard as you could. You aimed for their throat with your forehead. We were all very proud of the different paint on our helmets.
Thoms: We used to call it a ding, not a concussion. Now if they did get dinged they are done for at least the day.
On memory loss:
Thoms: I try and keep things simple and not have a lot of things scheduled for my day.
Buehler: My memory is gone. I carry a pocket recorder. If I have a thought I record it. I have to constantly go back and listen.
Buehler went through testing at Boston University School of Medicine, where physicians have taken the lead to understand how repeated blows to the head in sports are causing long-term brain damage. His examination didn’t show the protein said to be linked to CTE.
Buehler: They inject you with an isotope and they think the isotope will go to those damaged areas of the brain. They will only know after we’re dead when they open it up.
You wish they found something so you could have a magic bullet that you can make a correction and not suffer from it. It was a little disappointing from that standpoint. On the other hand, I’m in better shape than I might have thought.
Thoms met former NFL receiver Fred Willis, who is helping players worried about brain functionality through his company HPN Neurologic. Willis created a case for Thoms –who helps his son coach basketball at Campolindo High-Moraga — to get benefits from the NFL’s 88 Plan for retirees.
Thoms: He submitted the paperwork, but they turned me down and said the doctor wasn’t qualified enough. They made up some excuse. They have programs, but it is so hard to qualify you wonder how anybody benefits.
Buehler: It seems the NFL is a business and what you want to do is cut your losses. They’re just like politicians, they protect as much as they can for as long as they can.
Thoms: I go back and forth myself. You wonder whether it is a senior moment. It is hard to determine the difference. But playing nine years in the NFL, with the guys I played against, especially Mike Webster, and seeing what happened to him, I’ve got to think it is partly from football. (Webster was a Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center who was the first NFL player diagnosed with CTE).
On feelings of depression, one of the symptoms that is attributed to degenerative brain disease:
Thoms: At times I feel a little depressed. I never was depressed when I was younger. I don’t even know how to define it. I remember headaches. I used to think people made up headaches because I never got any headaches. They made it up to get attention. Maybe depression is the same thing.
Buehler: I’ve played in some high-profile playoff games where playing football was the last thing I wanted to do. I just wanted to stay in bed. Depression is something (where) everything is hopeless. By its very nature you see no future. I’ve had quite a few episodes, each one you don’t think you’ll make it out.
Contact Elliott Almond at 408-920-5865. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/elliottalmond.
